Brexit Has Brexit led to a Key dates
MPs and civil servants are under increasing strain to deliver an as-yet On 20 March Theresa May said
she sympathised with the
29 March 2017
public’s frustration at the lack of
Brexit progress. The day after
writing to European Council
president Donald Tusk to request
an extension of the deadline for
withdrawal, she said: “Of this I am
absolutely sure. You, the public,
have had enough.”
You’d be hard-pushed to find
anyone who disagrees. Both the
most fervent Leavers and Remainers
are at their wits’ end after three long
years, and now an extension until
the end of October. The nation is
collectively exhausted from simply
observing Brexit.
So spare a thought for the civil
servants and departmental
government workers tasked with
facilitating the UK’s departure.
Reports from within Westminster
and Whitehall paint a picture of a
workforce close to breaking point.
In April it emerged that the
Department for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (Defra) employed
a company to provide mental health
support to staff to ease the stress of
preparing for a no-deal Brexit.
Conservative MP Robert Halfon
described the House of Commons
as “having a collective breakdown –
a cross between Lord of the Flies and
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
So how did we reach this point?
And what can leaders do to mitigate
the pressures?
Although it can be hard to
remember that there were
significant political stories before
Brexit, like any major event it was
not born in a vacuum. In the years
leading up to 2016, austerity was
the most talked-about policy in
British politics. As a senior civil
servant who has been right at the
Brexit coalface told HR magazine,
this has made dealing with Brexit
even more difficult – and also
meant morale was low even before
the process began.
“Since austerity came in in 2010,
lots of people have not had a pay
rise and lots of teams have reduced
in size; some pensions have gone,
and things like privilege days have
been taken away,” says the civil
servant, who asked not to be named.
“As a service we were smaller,
we’d lost a lot of good people and
we were more demoralised. The
hiring freeze meant that there were
pockets within the hierarchy with
big problems.”
A Freedom of Information
request in 2017 evidences the strain
Brexit has added to the mix. It
revealed that the number of calls
made to parliament’s employee
assistance programme doubled
from 108 in 2015 to 240 in 2016. In
2017 the number was 2,038 between
January and October.
One of the most troubling
reports coming out of Westminster
recently suggests Brexit pressure
may have contributed to a
heightening culture of bullying and
harassment. Laura Cox’s
independent inquiry into the House
of Commons released in October
2018 revealed almost daily examples
of ministers shouting at or belittling
staff; swearing at them face to face
or over the phone; being ‘routinely
unpleasant, overbearing or
confrontational’; and treating staff
‘like servants’.
Cary Cooper, 50th anniversary
professor of organisational
psychology and health at
Manchester Business School and
government advisor, told HR
magazine this kind of behaviour in
departments so squeezed by Brexit
comes as no surprise.
“It’s a pressure cooker,” he says.
“Especially for the politicians. A lot
of them are so frustrated, and
they’re going to take that out on the
civil servants. Those relationships,
between ministers and their private
personal secretaries especially must
be strained. In that kind of scenario,
News and analysis Civil service pressures
uncertainty:
23 June 2016
The UK votes to leave the European
Union. It’s a moment that shocks
many. In Westminster there’s no
time for digesting the result as the
gargantuan task of creating a
Brexit roadmap begins
UK sends Article 50 noti cation to the EU,
locking the nation into a deadline of 29
the government’s
ability to meet this
given the amount
of work still to
March 2019 to leave. Many cast doubt on
be done
8 June 2017
After the Daily Mail reports that May will
‘crush the saboteurs’ in a general election
that will give her a majority to
deliver Brexit decisively, the
election instead results in a
hung parliament and then
a con dence and supply
agreement between
the Conservatives
and Northern
Ireland’s Democratic
Unionist Party
14 December 2018
This European Council in Brussels is seen as
‘The Alamo’ for brokering a deal with the EU
in time to leave on 29
March 2019. No
agreement is
forthcoming and the
chances of missing the
deadline increase
20 March 2019
Theresa May of cially asks the EU for a Brexit
extension. The deal
eventually struck
grants a ‘ extension’,
meaning the UK
must leave by 31
October at the
latest but may
leave sooner
Photography: Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office
14 HR June 2019 hrmagazine.co.uk
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